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I think these people never liked crayons. Thats what this game is like. When you were given crayons as a kid and you realized you could do draw anything with them. Or if you were like these people, you just eat them.

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Before I saw the demo, I was like everyone else and had no idea of how Spore would actually play. Maxis/EA should do a better job of explaining the gameplay, especially in the Civilization and Galactic phases, lest everyone think Spore is solely about creating funny creatures and sharing them on Facebook.

One of the more interesting revelations is that during the tribal phase, Wright originally had the other tribes be of the same species as your creature. (The logic being that there can be only one “intelligent” species per planet. Humans don’t worry about monkey tribes overtaking us. Instead we fight among other tribes of humans.)

But the other devs convinced Wright to make rival tribes consist of separate species. By the civilization phase, however, rival cities on your planet are populated by your species. You can only advance to the Galactic stage after conquering or assimilating rival cities and becoming a unified species.

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Again, thanks.

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Here are some of my impression after seeing Will Wright demo it for about 80 minutes.

Do you actively control them like an RTS?

In the creature stage, you control only one creature, but you can form groups with your fellow creatures. This group does whatever you command your creature to do: attack, move, etc. A weak creature who specializes in socializing can become powerful through sheer numbers, but you’re still directly controlling only one unit.

In the tribal phase, you control multiple creatures and order them to attack, gather food, domesticate primitive creatures, and execute other paleolithic tasks.

In the civilization phase, you no longer have direct control over your creatures. Now you command vehicles. My impression is that you’re only allowed one model of vehicle per category (land, air, sea), but can build multiple vehicles and control them as groups. They’re commanded in typical RTS fashion; they respond with a distinctly RTS form of Simlish (radios crackling, static, “affirmative” tone). Ground and sea vehicles can traverse the planet and build derricks to harvest “spice,” the game’s resource post-tribe phase. They also attack and interact with other cities.

In the space phase, you have direct control of only one spaceship. Making allies and creating a sort of “federation,” as Wright called it, allows allied ships to join your fleet. But you don’t have direct control over these allied ships and they follow the orders given to your directly-controlled ship.

Can you optionally try to guide them like a Sims game?

Your creatures really don’t have the same kind of free will as the creature in Black&White. Think of the creators as ways of making RTS units.

Do they have set behaviors, or can you pick different paths for them to go down I.E. ‘good’ or ‘evil’?

There are paths, but not related to good or evil. In the early game, your creature can an herbivore, carnivore, or scavenger (maybe even an omnivore, can’t remember). In the tribe phase, you can focus on diplomacy or war or both. Once you reach the civilization phase, your city can be religious, economic, or military. Wright sped through the game so he could show us as much as possible, but how you tool your creature early in the game effects how your civilization acts later on.

Calling Spore a “god game” is misleading, I think. It’s more RTS/4X with elements of action games and SimCity thrown in. The editors are ways of making cool units that possess particular combinations of stats the fit your playstyle. Indeed, you don’t use any god-like powers to terraform other worlds. Instead, you command your spaceship to use giant lasers and tractor beams and other products of science(tm) to mess with other planets.

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What will be the real question is ‘what about after I shove my creatures in the world’. Does anyone have any links of goodness about that, OTHER than PR stuff? Some actual hands-on reports, or demos of it in action past the creation stage. Do you just make creatures and watch them go? Do you actively control them like an RTS? Can you optionally try to guide them like a Sims game? Can you train them like B&W? Do they have set behaviors, or can you pick different paths for them to go down I.E. ‘good’ or ‘evil’?

There has been a lot of talk about what you could do, but this close to release it’d be nice to see more info about what you *can* do.

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After an extensive play around with the trial creature creator there are a couple of niggles which bother me, but on the whole I’m impressed how well it works considering what the game is doing. For example it’s sometimes a fiddly to place limb joints, but most of the time I’m amazed that it interpolates your placement on a 2D plane into a position in 3D space and puts the joint pretty much where you wanted it .

Oh, and cheers for the heads up on the Game pre-order deal Kieron. I’d only seen the rebate for the EA store version and was going to leave off buying the full creature creator.

In other news, I’m disappointed to find that Daleks are outnumbered ten to one by Trogdors.

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How could you possibly think that could be considered a valid comment given that it’s blatantly appealing to gamers of most ages?

I think that may have been a delayed reaction from the announcement of the game.

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At least that is until the Tribal stage, I’m not sure how they’re going to handle that, whether the tribes actions will be controlled directly by the player (like a RTS) or behaviour influenced by what you show them (B&W).

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Is anyone else thinking “Black and White 3″?

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KG

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